Riding the Lightning
by Grav
Summary: It used to come when he called.  Now it would only kill him, fried to a crisp like any other human.  Post Sleepers and Haunted.


**AN**: This was written for the sfaflashfic Challenge #8: weather. I'm still a little surprised that there was no cold weather related cuddling involved, but whatever.

**Spoilers**: Sleepers and Haunted

**Disclaimer**: I do not own this show. Is it April yet?

**Rating**: Teen-ish

**Characters/Pairing**: Nikola Tesla, John Druitt

**Summary**: "It used to come when I called," he said, with just a touch of melodrama, and without bothering to turn around. "Now, it would only kill me, fried to a crisp like any other human."

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**Riding the Lightning**

He stood on the roof of the New Yorker Hotel, which was a bad idea for a number of reasons.

To begin with, there was the very unlikely chance that some security guard downstairs would see him on the CCTV. He had broken in, of course, since he knew all the best and most secret ways in and out of the place. He was not in a position to make a grand escape at the moment, and he doubted he could muster the charisma to talk himself out of a tight spot, should he end up in one.

There was also an even more remote possibility that said guard would recognize him. He was currently undergoing a resurgence of popularity in the public eye, or at least the historical version of himself was thanks to a couple of films in which he appeared as a minor character, and not a small number of fairly decent books. He was sure that somewhere on the internet there were fans crazy enough to make a pilgrimage to the hotel where he'd lived, worked and died. On any other day, it would have amused him.

Today though, he was just depressed.

The real reason he shouldn't be on the roof of the New Yorker was also the reason he'd decided to go there in the first place. It was New York City, of course, and it stopped for no one, but he could take a moment to himself in what was promising to be a terrific thunderstorm.

It wasn't raining yet, though the clouds loomed threateningly. Instead, the sky rumbled around him, and he could feel the gradual increase in potential energy as it built and built in the air. Even that was different now. He felt the electricity on his skin, in every hair on his body, but nothing more. It didn't run in his blood, call to soul, sing to him in its own language that he was graced enough to understand.

If he was anyone else, he'd probably jump. But he won't, because he's Nikola Tesla, and he has been clawing himself out of these sorts of unfair circumstances since before he had claws at all.

There was a different hum in the air, a sort of electricity he did not control and never could, and for the first time, he was truly afraid, because he never meant to die at this hotel, and now the choice might be taken from him by fate and the madman he knew was standing in arm's reach.

"It used to come when I called," he said, with just a touch of melodrama, and without bothering to turn around. "Now, it would only kill me, fried to a crisp like any other human."

"There are many ways to die, Nikola," said the voice behind him, so tightly controlled that Nikola suppressed a shudder at the effort his sometime friend was expending not to kill him. "They have never bothered you before."

"I was never mortal before," Nikola said bitterly. "Well, I haven't been for a while anyway. I'm sure I've got all sorts of bad habits."

"That is unfortunate," said the voice. There was a sharper edge to it now then there had been before. "I had been hoping to ask a favour of you."

"Helen called," Nikola said. "She said she thought you might be dead."

Silence, but the threatening kind, greeted his mention of Helen's name. It was a test, of course, to see how far he could push, how close to the edge he could get without provoking that final shove to send him over.

"Did she say why?"

"Something about there really being an underlying cause to your – less humane tendencies." Nikola said. "And that you took it back with great cost to yourself."

There was a not so distant rumble that Nikola realized wasn't thunder at all.

"I can't help you," he said. "Not anymore. It doesn't come when I call it."

"I'm sorry, Nikola." Surprisingly, the sentiment seemed genuine. Or at least very nearly selfless.

"No you're not," Nikola said, pushing again. "You're not sorry. You're jealous. I lost mine, and you're stuck with what you got."

"Please, Nikola. Please try."

Nikola turned, just as the first real crack of lightning split the sky. For a fraction of a second, he saw the monster fully lit up in front of him, and again, shuddered away from it. In the shadows, it was easier to bear, easier to imagine that the face he saw was the face from his memories, not the nightmare.

John looked terrible. His clothes were unkempt, as though he'd been wearing them since fleeing the Sanctuary, and for all Nikola knew, he had. He was pale, even in the darkness, and there was a hunger about his eyes that had nothing to do with whether or not he had managed to eat anything lately. But he was still John, and that meant Helen still loved him, so Nikola took a deep breath and a step towards him.

Last time, it had been a simple enough process: nails into chest, with no regard for injury, and then pour in as much current as he could without killing John outright. The only real trouble had been avoiding the temptation to take advantage of all that available blood. Now, the very idea of bloodshed turns Nikola's stomach in a way it hasn't since Queen Victoria was on the throne. It was flat hands on John's torso this time, and the power he reached out with was new, untested and completely insufficient to the task.

He could feel it, just around the edges, in the place where electricity and magnetism meet, but it slid from his grasp every time he tried to close his mind around it. It was like an eel, wiry and elusive, teasing him every time he thought he had caught it in his grip. He growled, the way he used to when he had teeth and tone to back up sentiment, and at least John did not laugh at him.

Nikola withdrew his hands, defeated, and waited for John to decide what to do with him. He knew there would be a knife in his pocket, if John did not fancy the spectacle of a long fall into eternity. He wondered how many people had died in the same place twice.

"What will you do?" he heard himself say.

"Asia would be the best, I imagine," John said, his voice once more wrapped so tightly in on itself, Nikola expected it to snap at any moment. "There are always people there, after all. And drugs."

"And it's far away from," Nikola hesitated, "from her."

"If you tell Helen where I've gone," John said, his voice a soft caress that was even more dangerous than his controlled tone. "I will kill you."

"I won't," Nikola said, and knew he was telling the truth. He would never tell Helen. Not until she absolutely needed to know. "I promise."

"If you find a way, let me know," John said, and disappeared before Nikola could ask if he meant a way to get back his own power or a way to banish John's.

Nikola stood there, alone again on the roof of the New Yorker Hotel, with lightning in the air and thunder closing in from every horizon.

And of course, it started to rain.

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**fin**

**AN**: I was totally going to call this "The Lightning With Its Rapid Wrath", but I have a story called that already, so I went with "Riding the Lightning" instead. I think it fits better anyway, since it is a euphemism for the electric chair, and this is kind of about electricity and dying.

Gravity_Not_Included, February 21, 2011**  
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End file.
